Tanzania
Zanzibar - Mjini Magharibi Region
STONE TOWN
Al Rahma Hospital
Tuesday December 20th, 2016
With one of our travellers visiting the hospital a couple of days ago, I figured misery loves company and decided to go check out the emergency room at the local Al Rahma Hospital for myself. During the white-water trip two weeks ago, I managed to not only break my little toe by stubbing it on some boulders, but had subsequently opened it up as well. To make thing a little more interesting, the toe had since become infected and extremely painful to the point of hampering my walking efforts. I foolishly figured that time and iodine would resolve the issues, but it was not to be.
In the accompanying photos, you can clearly see my reactions to the nurse slicing the toe open in three separate places and then physically squeezing all the fluids out of the wounds until fresh blood was produced. All this without any local anaesthetic or pain killers. I collected some anti-biotics from the pharmacy on the way out after paying $10AUD for the ER visit and I was good to go.
It would have to be the best $10.00 I've ever spent and thanks to both Angela Whitehead for changing the dressing over the next couple of days and Karlie Schmidt for helping with the Kilimanjaro "pain killers", I was well on the way to a full recovery.
I had to laugh at "Mr T", who had accompanied me to the ER. He was sitting there hangign shit on me and having a good laugh until the nurse went all "Rambo Ambo on my toe, then went really quite and kept looking away. It looked to be distressing him more than me.
